Photo by Erika Siebring.

Hey there Internet! What’s been going on?

Well it has been yet another week here in North Platte, so I thought I would update all of you on what’s been happening! Now as you may recall I was off Thursday and Friday last week, and worked from Saturday to Tuesday. So, here’s a quick rundown of what’s happened as far as work assignments:

Saturday:
Two interesting things, actually — first, I was able to see the North Platte Farmers Market and had the privilege of speaking with a woman who had been there for every single Farmers Market ever. As in, she has been there every year since it first started about 40 years ago — very cute story. Next was an ice cream social for first responders put on my a local organization. And to answer your question: no I was not able to eat any of the ice cream.
Sunday: I took a trip on this day! I drove about 50 minutes east of North Platte to Ogallala, NE (which is technically in Mountain Time — it passes the time barrier) to see Lake McConaughy, where a number of people were spending their Labor Day weekend. It was my first time there and I have to tell you: it was beautiful! Oh, it was amazing to see everyone there, to see the boats, to see the view. Very nice spot to take beautiful footage. Spoke to a very nice family who were perfect on camera — just a good story. Very hot, though. VERY hot.
Monday:
Another trip day! This time I drove to Paxton, NE (which is ALSO in Mountain Time but just barely and it’s super annoying) which is this cute, little bitty town on the side of the highway; it’s in the same direction as Ogallala but is only about 30 minutes away. And this town is so small — I’m talking, like, it would take less than 5 minutes to drive from one side of town to the other. Anyway though, they had this adorable Labor Day parade where the cutest little high school band played (about 10 people). Afterwards everyone headed to the local park for some food, games, shopping, etc. and again I got the perfect possible interviewees — these adorable little boys. Also saw this chonk cat.
Tuesday:
Two stories today — the weekly Board of Commissioners meeting where they’re getting closer on making a decision about expanding the local jail. Hopefully they’ll finally have a decision within the next week or so — I’ve been following this since I first moved here. The next thing was actually pretty nice, some local organizations banded together to donate a washer and dryer to a local elementary school — very cute and very sweet. Ah, those kids are adorable.

Anyway, so that was this week and I have three days off! WHOOP WHOOP! Tuesday evening was the usual — Hardees chicken tenders for dinner, Diet Coke with my last shot of Blackheart rum, a bath, watching Shattered Glass on my laptop. Slept in yesterday morning, ran out of bacon so I didn’t make my typical pancakes and bacon, but I updated my budget for September and bought some goodies for my friends back home! I want to send my friends these little care packages but I still need to buy some boxes and envelopes; that’ll happen tomorrow when I go grocery shopping. I made a list of some foods to buy so I can make some recipes out of my cookbooks so I’ll see about that tomorrow. I made some more sundried tomatoes — both yesterday and today — and this week I worked on a little project of mine!

Photo by Erika Siebring.

As pictured above, I had this idea when I finished off one bottle of rum last week: I wrote these little positive messages on Post-It Notes and tired them up with black thread. I put them all into the washed-out liquor bottle and now it sits on my kitchen table! So now whenever I — or a guest — wants to take one, they can! I call them little Pick-Me-Ups. Speaking of guests, I also really want to buy a little decorative board that displays the wifi network and password for guests so they can have it as soon as they come in. I’ll have to look on Amazon for that.
Now for today: today I got dressed in my comfy sweatpants and a tank top, broke out my kitty bag and went to the local espresso shop downtown — The Espresso Shop by Caravan. Has a nice little blended mocha coffee, wrote some poetry, walked around a bit, finally got some renter’s insurance and factored that into my budget, went to Walgreens, double-checked my work schedule to give to my friends so they can some visit — done a lot so far today! I still need to check my mail and see about some other things. . .

What else? I dunno. As always been talking to my friends; spent a lot of my evenings this week working on the Pick-Me-Ups; continuing to lose weight according to my scale — I tried using measuring tape to measure my thighs and stomach but I don’t think there’s noticeable change yet — but I dunno it could just be water weight.

Anyway, if there’s anything else I’ll let you know! Merci.